THERE are low-budget films, there are micro-budget films, and then there
is “Breaking
Upwards.” It may be hard to imagine how someone could make a
feature-length romantic comedy in New York City for just under $15,000,
but Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones managed to do it.

The making of “Breaking Upwards,” which opens Friday both at the IFC
Center and on cable through video on demand, is almost a tutorial in
how a do-it-yourself ethos can overcome the tough economics of the movie
business. And that is not simply because the couple collaborated on the
script, played the lead roles and produced the film together, with him
also directing and her in charge of tasks ranging from writing the
lyrics for the songs to cooking meals for cast and crew.

Most
members of that small, young crew was recruited from Craigslist and worked free.
PVC tubes were adapted to make a track for their camera dolly, and when
Ms. Lister-Jones was given a red carpet as a joke birthday gift, that
was also used to help steady the camera. Their director of photography,
Alex Bergman, used an inheritance from his grandmother, meant to enable
him to go to film school, to buy top-of-the-line equipment instead.

Insurance was obtained by piggybacking on the policy of another
production, thereby saving thousands of dollars, and because the movie
was shot digitally, Mr. Wein was able to edit it in his living room,
using a flat-screen television. The couple was also able to get the
veteran Broadway actors Julie White, Peter Friedman and Andrea Martin to join the
cast, along with their friend Olivia Thirlby from HBO’s “Bored to Death.”

“You can’t put a value on sweat equity,” said Jonathan Sehring, the
president of IFC Entertainment, which is distributing the film. “If this
were just friends and family, that would be one thing. But they’ve got
some very distinguished actors, and it looks great. So it’s incredible
that they spent so little out of pocket.”

Mr. Wein said the
couple began shopping their script, meant to be “funny and intelligent
in a way going back to the early Woody Allen films,” in 2007, naïvely hoping to make the
film “through a production company for anywhere between $1 and $2
million.” But the process was slower than they anticipated and coincided
with a retrenchment at studios and production companies, which were
closing or downsizing specialty divisions that had been financing quirky
low-budget films.

That shakeout has “complicated the process for
indie filmmakers in the sense that there are fewer distributors, which
means there are fewer potential buyers for films, and so the deals are
not as attractive because there is less leverage and less money
involved,” said Richard Abramowitz, founder of Abramorama, a consulting
company that specializes in production, marketing and distribution
services for independent films. “On the other hand, it’s created a bit
of a new industry that allows D.I.Y. filmmakers to control the process
and the rights themselves.”

“Breaking Upwards” is about a pair
of Jewish Manhattan 20-somethings who find their relationship
foundering; but rather than split up, they choose to alternate days
alone and together. Emotions get complicated and feelings get hurt, of
course, as they meet potential romantic partners and have to explain
their arrangement to their uncomprehending parents, played by Ms. White,
Mr. Friedman and Ms. Martin.

The story in large part echoes the
experience of Mr. Wein, 26, and Ms. Lister-Jones, 27. A couple for six
years, they “started having issues,” as they put it, about two years
after they met and decided to try what their parents’ generation might
term an open relationship but which they (and anthropologists) call
polyamory.

“I remember that we were sitting in a coffee shop
much like a scene in the film, writing on a paper tablecloth, both of us
being so hyper-articulate about the goals and bounds of this experiment
we were going to do,” Ms. Lister-Jones recalled. “It was definitely a
sad moment, but we were also laughing at ourselves. I remember that at
that moment Daryl said, ‘This would make a really funny movie.’ ”

While the couple was apart, Mr. Wein wrote a script with a friend,
Peter Duchan. When he and Ms. Lister-Jones got back together, she was
invited to add her perspective to a screenplay that, in her estimation,
“needed the feminine touch” to tone down a tendency to “heroize the male
protagonist and villainize the female.”

Many micro-budget films
are made by young filmmakers, who often rely on friends and give short
shrift to the older generation. But Ms. Lister-Jones has worked in New
York theater, including in “The Little Dog Laughed” with Ms. White,
which helped to recruit actors who have won or been nominated for Tony Awards to play
the fleshed-out roles of the couple’s parents — paid at the Screen Actors Guild
ultra-minimum of just over $100 a day.

“The money was never an
issue,” Ms. Martin wrote in an e-mail message. “When you sign on to do
indie films, minimal salary to no salary is a given. You say yes for
many other reasons.” She added: “There was something very appealing
about the collaboration that reminded me of my early days of Second
City. Everyone on the same page, no hierarchy.”

Ms. Thirlby, who
has been a friend of Mr. Wein’s since she was in high school and
received critical praise for her performances in “Juno”
and “The
Wackness,” played his alternate romantic interest. She also
remarked on “the very casual, very low-key” approach on the set.

“They called me up one day, a Sunday morning, and asked if I could come
over because they needed to shoot an additional scene,” she recalled.
“So I went over in my own clothes and brought a selection of my shirts
and earrings for Daryl to pick from.” And of course, like mostly
everybody else, she did her own makeup and hair.

But once the shoot was finished, in 2008, just as the economy was
nosediving, Mr. Wein and Ms. Lister-Jones realized that they had, in
their words, “an even bigger mountain to climb.” Not only were they
first-time feature filmmakers, but they were working in a genre that is
an especially hard sell to distributors.

“A romantic comedy that
doesn’t have one of very few leading women or men is complicated,” said
Mr. Abramowitz, who also teaches at New York University’s
Tisch School of the Arts. “With a horror film the genre is its own
star. But with a romantic comedy there are certain conventions that are
expected and a level of anticipation in seeing a familiar actor or
actress going through those paces. Daryl and Zoe are talented actors and
filmmakers with a fine script, but they are starting off with a
disadvantage because they are not recognizable.”

Hoping to
overcome that handicap, the couple have been promoting “Breaking
Upwards” over the last year with every tool available, from the latest
in Internet social networking to the most basic: writing the title of
their movie in chalk on sidewalks and walls around Manhattan. In advance
of taking “Breaking Upwards” on the festival circuit — from South by
Southwest, where it was seen by IFC, to places like Little Rock, Ark.,
and, this month, the Pittsburgh Jewish Israeli Film Festival — they
managed to generate buzz with a series of videos for funnyordie.com that
included plot summaries sung as rap and reggae and a sketch in which
Ms. Martin plays a vindictive Judge Judy type.

With a $40,000
advance from IFC in hand, Mr. Wein and Ms. Lister-Jones decided that
having their movie shown in a theater was also a necessary part of
establishing its identity. They plowed that money into promotion and
marketing, and “Breaking Upwards” is scheduled to open in theaters in
Los Angeles and San Francisco later next month, even though it will
already be available through video on demand. But some colleagues in the
micro-budget world disagree and no longer bother to seek a traditional
theatrical release.

“My feeling is that every movie has a moment
when awareness is at a peak, when it is new and exciting and people want
to see it, and usually that moment is a festival premiere,” said the
prolific director Joe Swanberg, whose films include “Alexander
the Last” and “Hannah
Takes the Stairs.” “If you have that and then a distributor buys
your movie, it becomes all about trying to re-create that moment six or
nine months later, spending money to get what you already got for free.

“To me, it’s better to capitalize on that attention and make it
possible for you to watch it right away if it sounds interesting to
you,” he continued. “There is a kind of national film community that
lives outside major cities, is reading blogs and reviews and is part of
the cinephile discussion, but doesn’t have access to a film until it’s
on DVD. Video on demand opens up that discussion to everybody right
away.”

But, perhaps spurred by the runaway success of “Paranormal
Activity,” which was made for about the same cost as “Breaking
Upwards” and has grossed more than $100 million, major studios seem
interested in edging into the D.I.Y. game. Paramount, for example, has
created a new micro-budget division to be called Insurge Pictures,
though the studio would neither confirm nor deny reports that the new
unit’s initial slate will consist of 10 films to be made for $100,000
each.

For their part Mr. Wein and Ms. Lister-Jones have three
other scripts they’d like to film and, thinking big, suggested a $3
million budget to a studio executive interested in one of the
screenplays. “Unfortunately we don’t know how to market a film that is
made for just $3 million,” they recalled being told, which raises the
odd prospect that their proven ability to work on a shoestring may keep
them confined to the micro-budget niche.

“In this market I think
the battle continues,” Ms. Lister-Jones said. “It feels like a huge
success that we’ve made this movie and sold it and that it will have a
theatrical release and will be on V.O.D. and all these things. But I
think we’ve encountered how hard it is still, even with a calling card
like this, to get any money, to see any money. We’re still a risk,
sadly.”

THERE are low-budget films, there are micro-budget films, and then there
is “Breaking
Upwards.” It may be hard to imagine how someone could make a
feature-length romantic comedy in New York City for just under $15,000,
but Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones managed to do it.

The making of “Breaking Upwards,” which opens Friday both at the IFC
Center and on cable through video on demand, is almost a tutorial in
how a do-it-yourself ethos can overcome the tough economics of the movie
business. And that is not simply because the couple collaborated on the
script, played the lead roles and produced the film together, with him
also directing and her in charge of tasks ranging from writing the
lyrics for the songs to cooking meals for cast and crew.

Most
members of that small, young crew was recruited from Craigslist and worked free.
PVC tubes were adapted to make a track for their camera dolly, and when
Ms. Lister-Jones was given a red carpet as a joke birthday gift, that
was also used to help steady the camera. Their director of photography,
Alex Bergman, used an inheritance from his grandmother, meant to enable
him to go to film school, to buy top-of-the-line equipment instead.

Insurance was obtained by piggybacking on the policy of another
production, thereby saving thousands of dollars, and because the movie
was shot digitally, Mr. Wein was able to edit it in his living room,
using a flat-screen television. The couple was also able to get the
veteran Broadway actors Julie White, Peter Friedman and Andrea Martin to join the
cast, along with their friend Olivia Thirlby from HBO’s “Bored to Death.”

“You can’t put a value on sweat equity,” said Jonathan Sehring, the
president of IFC Entertainment, which is distributing the film. “If this
were just friends and family, that would be one thing. But they’ve got
some very distinguished actors, and it looks great. So it’s incredible
that they spent so little out of pocket.”

Mr. Wein said the
couple began shopping their script, meant to be “funny and intelligent
in a way going back to the early Woody Allen films,” in 2007, naïvely hoping to make the
film “through a production company for anywhere between $1 and $2
million.” But the process was slower than they anticipated and coincided
with a retrenchment at studios and production companies, which were
closing or downsizing specialty divisions that had been financing quirky
low-budget films.

That shakeout has “complicated the process for
indie filmmakers in the sense that there are fewer distributors, which
means there are fewer potential buyers for films, and so the deals are
not as attractive because there is less leverage and less money
involved,” said Richard Abramowitz, founder of Abramorama, a consulting
company that specializes in production, marketing and distribution
services for independent films. “On the other hand, it’s created a bit
of a new industry that allows D.I.Y. filmmakers to control the process
and the rights themselves.”

“Breaking Upwards” is about a pair
of Jewish Manhattan 20-somethings who find their relationship
foundering; but rather than split up, they choose to alternate days
alone and together. Emotions get complicated and feelings get hurt, of
course, as they meet potential romantic partners and have to explain
their arrangement to their uncomprehending parents, played by Ms. White,
Mr. Friedman and Ms. Martin.

The story in large part echoes the
experience of Mr. Wein, 26, and Ms. Lister-Jones, 27. A couple for six
years, they “started having issues,” as they put it, about two years
after they met and decided to try what their parents’ generation might
term an open relationship but which they (and anthropologists) call
polyamory.

“I remember that we were sitting in a coffee shop
much like a scene in the film, writing on a paper tablecloth, both of us
being so hyper-articulate about the goals and bounds of this experiment
we were going to do,” Ms. Lister-Jones recalled. “It was definitely a
sad moment, but we were also laughing at ourselves. I remember that at
that moment Daryl said, ‘This would make a really funny movie.’ ”

While the couple was apart, Mr. Wein wrote a script with a friend,
Peter Duchan. When he and Ms. Lister-Jones got back together, she was
invited to add her perspective to a screenplay that, in her estimation,
“needed the feminine touch” to tone down a tendency to “heroize the male
protagonist and villainize the female.”

Many micro-budget films
are made by young filmmakers, who often rely on friends and give short
shrift to the older generation. But Ms. Lister-Jones has worked in New
York theater, including in “The Little Dog Laughed” with Ms. White,
which helped to recruit actors who have won or been nominated for Tony Awards to play
the fleshed-out roles of the couple’s parents — paid at the Screen Actors Guild
ultra-minimum of just over $100 a day.

“The money was never an
issue,” Ms. Martin wrote in an e-mail message. “When you sign on to do
indie films, minimal salary to no salary is a given. You say yes for
many other reasons.” She added: “There was something very appealing
about the collaboration that reminded me of my early days of Second
City. Everyone on the same page, no hierarchy.”

Ms. Thirlby, who
has been a friend of Mr. Wein’s since she was in high school and
received critical praise for her performances in “Juno”
and “The
Wackness,” played his alternate romantic interest. She also
remarked on “the very casual, very low-key” approach on the set.

“They called me up one day, a Sunday morning, and asked if I could come
over because they needed to shoot an additional scene,” she recalled.
“So I went over in my own clothes and brought a selection of my shirts
and earrings for Daryl to pick from.” And of course, like mostly
everybody else, she did her own makeup and hair.

But once the shoot was finished, in 2008, just as the economy was
nosediving, Mr. Wein and Ms. Lister-Jones realized that they had, in
their words, “an even bigger mountain to climb.” Not only were they
first-time feature filmmakers, but they were working in a genre that is
an especially hard sell to distributors.

“A romantic comedy that
doesn’t have one of very few leading women or men is complicated,” said
Mr. Abramowitz, who also teaches at New York University’s
Tisch School of the Arts. “With a horror film the genre is its own
star. But with a romantic comedy there are certain conventions that are
expected and a level of anticipation in seeing a familiar actor or
actress going through those paces. Daryl and Zoe are talented actors and
filmmakers with a fine script, but they are starting off with a
disadvantage because they are not recognizable.”

Hoping to
overcome that handicap, the couple have been promoting “Breaking
Upwards” over the last year with every tool available, from the latest
in Internet social networking to the most basic: writing the title of
their movie in chalk on sidewalks and walls around Manhattan. In advance
of taking “Breaking Upwards” on the festival circuit — from South by
Southwest, where it was seen by IFC, to places like Little Rock, Ark.,
and, this month, the Pittsburgh Jewish Israeli Film Festival — they
managed to generate buzz with a series of videos for funnyordie.com that
included plot summaries sung as rap and reggae and a sketch in which
Ms. Martin plays a vindictive Judge Judy type.

With a $40,000
advance from IFC in hand, Mr. Wein and Ms. Lister-Jones decided that
having their movie shown in a theater was also a necessary part of
establishing its identity. They plowed that money into promotion and
marketing, and “Breaking Upwards” is scheduled to open in theaters in
Los Angeles and San Francisco later next month, even though it will
already be available through video on demand. But some colleagues in the
micro-budget world disagree and no longer bother to seek a traditional
theatrical release.

“My feeling is that every movie has a moment
when awareness is at a peak, when it is new and exciting and people want
to see it, and usually that moment is a festival premiere,” said the
prolific director Joe Swanberg, whose films include “Alexander
the Last” and “Hannah
Takes the Stairs.” “If you have that and then a distributor buys
your movie, it becomes all about trying to re-create that moment six or
nine months later, spending money to get what you already got for free.

“To me, it’s better to capitalize on that attention and make it
possible for you to watch it right away if it sounds interesting to
you,” he continued. “There is a kind of national film community that
lives outside major cities, is reading blogs and reviews and is part of
the cinephile discussion, but doesn’t have access to a film until it’s
on DVD. Video on demand opens up that discussion to everybody right
away.”

But, perhaps spurred by the runaway success of “Paranormal
Activity,” which was made for about the same cost as “Breaking
Upwards” and has grossed more than $100 million, major studios seem
interested in edging into the D.I.Y. game. Paramount, for example, has
created a new micro-budget division to be called Insurge Pictures,
though the studio would neither confirm nor deny reports that the new
unit’s initial slate will consist of 10 films to be made for $100,000
each.

For their part Mr. Wein and Ms. Lister-Jones have three
other scripts they’d like to film and, thinking big, suggested a $3
million budget to a studio executive interested in one of the
screenplays. “Unfortunately we don’t know how to market a film that is
made for just $3 million,” they recalled being told, which raises the
odd prospect that their proven ability to work on a shoestring may keep
them confined to the micro-budget niche.

“In this market I think
the battle continues,” Ms. Lister-Jones said. “It feels like a huge
success that we’ve made this movie and sold it and that it will have a
theatrical release and will be on V.O.D. and all these things. But I
think we’ve encountered how hard it is still, even with a calling card
like this, to get any money, to see any money. We’re still a risk,
sadly.”